Two Degrees 2013

TWO DEGREES

CLIMATE, CONSUMERISM, COMMUNITY...

17 – 22 JUNE 2013

CLIMATE, CONSUMERISM, COMMUNITY...

TWO DEGREES ASKS WHAT IS BROKEN IN OUR WORLD AND WHAT CAN WE DO TO MEND IT? Our third Two Degrees festival sits somewhere between art and action offering audiences a chance to participate and think about how we can change our future.

For this festival we have continued to look at the subject of climate change with a wide view, seeing it as part of a broader global crisis, and engaging with political and social issues alongside the environmental.

Our approach to climate change is best represented not in these words, but in the diverse range of artists' work that has been brought together in this festival. We invite you to be part of these projects that encourage new thinking, community participation and action, and to join us to find ways we can work together to achieve positive change.

#TWODEGS2013

PLATFORM

OIL CITY

A SPY THRILLER FOR THE POST-OCCUPY ERA

10 – 21 June, Monday to Friday 9am | 1pm | 5pm Meet at Toynbee Studios £5

TWO DEGREES COMMISSION

This new piece of site-specific immersive theatre by Platform takes you deep into the underbelly of London’s oil economy.

Around you the financial sector shimmers in high-rise office blocks.

Behind closed doors deals are done and oil projects financed with few questions asked. Meanwhile vast swathes of Alberta, Canada, teeter on the brink of ecological disaster, as the struggle to stop tar sands mining of lands protected under the First Nations’ Treaty goes on.

By eavesdropping on business people and seeking out secret documents, you will help piece together a puzzle that interweaves government files with financial deals. But whose truth counts? What laws apply when lives are on the line but big profits are to be made?

Alongside the performance, a mobile website is available to explore the real story in both London and Calgary.

Oil City is supported by Artists’ Project Earth.

www.oilcity.org.uk | Photo by Richard Houguez

LEWIS BASSETT

WORLDSTRIKE! A DAILY BRIEFING

UNTANGLING ECOLOGY IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

Monday 17 – Friday 21 | 8am The Sterling Café, The Gherkin £5 (including breakfast)

TWO DEGREES COMMISSION

In the City nature has a ghostly presence. From its value as a commodity traded on volatile markets to the organic breakfasts served in the cafes of the Square Mile and Canary Wharf; the earth’s ecology appears everywhere, yet the relationship between activities of the market and the earth’s role in the production of value goes unnoticed.

Now, from rising costs of food caused by an unusually long winter to the potential for a 'carbon bubble', the effects of our ecological environment are becoming hard for the markets to ignore.

Each morning of Two Degrees join experts and amateurs for breakfast to digest news from the Financial Times. With contributions from City workers, analysts and activists, each morning we will take the salmon pink pages of the FT as a starting point from which to untangle the web of finance and track the presence of our ecology in a system based on the paradox of infinite growth.

www.worldstrike2012.tumblr.com | Photo by Marco Pereira

ANDREA FRANCKE

READ + TALK + MAKE: A COMMUNITY MAKER MODEL

BUILDING SOMETHING YOU CAN’T BUY

Tuesday 18 | 6pm Friday 21 | 10am – 6pm Stockholm House, E1 Free

TWO DEGREES COMMISSION

Over the past two months artist Andrea Francke and residents from Glamis and St George’s Estates in Shadwell have set up a community ‘maker space’ where people can drop-in and use tools and materials to create and repurpose items for everyday living and use.

As well as being a place to meet, make and socialise it is a model for the collectivisation of labour and production, reflecting on selfsustainability, consumption and the agency and knowledge produced through building and constructing. Andrea and the residents will work together throughout the summer to establish the space, with the aim of creating a permanent resource led by local residents.

We’ll be holding two special events during Two Degrees, a celebration of the project on 18 June and an open day on 21 June when you can drop-in anytime and take part in talks, discussions and practical projects hosted by residents and guest artists.

www.andreafrancke.me.uk | Photo by Andrea Francke

KATE MCINTOSH

WORKTABLE

IT'S UP TO YOU TO DECIDE HOW THINGS COME APART, AND HOW THEY COME BACK TOGETHER

Tuesday 18 – Friday 21 | 4pm – 8pm Saturday 22 | 10am – 8pm Toynbee Studios Free

Worktable is a live installation, open to visitors to drop-in any time throughout the festival. The installation takes place in a series of rooms at Toynbee Studios. Outside these rooms you can hear the occasional sounds of heavy blows, breaking or sawing.

You sign in to enter, and can stay as long as you like. Once inside you are given instructions, equipment and safety goggles. Sign in and get to work.

| Photo By Kate Mcintosh

AMY SHARROCKS

MUSEUM OF WATER

WHAT WATER IS MOST PRECIOUS TO YOU?

Tuesday 18 | 12pm – 8pm Toynbee Studios Free

Museum of Water is a collection of publicly donated water and accompanying stories, an encouragement to consider the many ways we access and enjoy water: swimming in pools, paddling in the sea, splashing in puddles, drinking from taps…

Accumulating over two years in different sites worldwide, Museum of Water is an invitation to ponder this precious liquid and how we use it.

Choose which water is most precious to you. Find a bottle to put it in.

Tell us why you chose this water. We will keep it for you.

At Two Degrees you can make your own donation to the museum as well as see some of the existing collection. In celebration of the ready availability of fresh water in this country we’ll also be running the Water Bar, a free pop-up outdoor bar serving only tap water.

Originally curated by Artakt, Central St. Martins for the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

www.museumofwater.co.uk | Photo by Ben Blossom

DAVIS FREEMAN

7 PROMISES

CHANGE THE WORLD ONE VODKA SHOT AT A TIME

Tuesday 18 | 8pm Toynbee Studios £5

We know we’re up against an impending ecological disaster but then why aren’t we doing more about it? 7 Promises features two ecological preachers (Davis Freeman & Jerry Killick) who call for the audience to turn their words into action.

Join us for an evening looking at some of the issues we face with a sense of urgency and humour while we pass out the free alcohol. We could actually change the world. What more motivation do you need?

Directed by Davis Freeman, performed and created by Jerry Killick and Davis Freeman, visuals by Sam Vanoverschelde.

www.randomscream.be | Photo by Silvano Magnone

CONEY

A SHOW + TELL SALON ON SYSTEMS

HOW MIGHT WE CHANGE THE SYSTEMS WE PLAY, AND WHICH PLAY US?

Wednesday 19 | 7:30pm Toynbee Studios £5

Economic, environmental, personal or political - systems underpin every part of our world, but we’re often bad at understanding how they play and how we live within them.

Join speakers from a diverse set of backgrounds, as each introduces their latest efforts to understand the systems around us, and presents an open-ended question for debate among the audience.

There’ll also be a challenge for the adventurous waiting to be discovered in the streets around Toynbee Studios.

Show + Tell salons are presented as part of the network of Coney, created to make conversation around brilliant ideas. Coney has recently hosted salons on science and performance at the Dana Centre, and on activism at Camden People’s Theatre.

www.youhavefoundconey.net | Photo by Coney

ADRIFT

LAND SHIFT

NEW APPROACHES TO WRITING ABOUT PLACE

Thursday 20 | 7:30pm Toynbee Studios £5

Poet Tom Chivers hosts an evening exploring shifting landscapes and alternative geographies.

Award-winning writer Michael Symmons Roberts reads from Edgelands, recording journeys into the forgotten spaces of England: the mobile masts and gravel pits, business parks and landfill sites.

In a special new commission, maverick musician Leafcutter John puts his ear to the ground, divining a new piece of sonic innovation from the electrical currents of the city. Writer and artist Justin Hopper presents his ongoing explorations of the South Downs, unearthing ‘the eerie malleability of the English suburb’. Amy Cutler documents the shifting languages of forests and coasts; a poet and cultural geographer, her recent publication Nostalgia Forest combines collaged texts with dendrochronology manuals. And in this final event of ADRIFT, his year-long project with Cape Farewell, Chivers shares stories from his ‘urban pilgrimages’ along London’s lost rivers.

| Photo by Tom Chivers

KAMALA KATBAMNA

CHANGE THE RECORD!

SONGS FOR OUR CITY

Friday 21 | 7:30pm Meet at Toynbee Studios Free

TWO DEGREES COMMISSION

Change the Record! is a choir made up of people who work, live and play in the area around Commercial Street. Over the past three months Kamala Katbamna has invited members of this new choir to join her for one-to-one conversations, thinking about the influence they have as individuals over the local environment and how they can collectively shape the future of this powerful corner of London.

Coming together for a single performance during Two Degrees, the choir will take audiences on a tour of their East End; visiting intimate and unexpected spaces that mark the political, social and geographical boundaries of an area that is constantly in flux.

www.changetherec.wordpress.com | Photo by Mark Ovenden

ARTSADMIN & LIFT IN ASSOCIATION WITH NEF

IMAGINE THE GREAT TRANSITION

CAN IT STILL TURN OUT RIGHT?

Saturday 22 | 10am – 8pm Toynbee Studios £10

Are we trapped in business-as-usual? Could the ‘less’ make us happier than the ‘more’? What do we really value?

For the concluding day of Two Degrees, Artsadmin and LIFT have joined forces with the new economics foundation (nef). In 2009 nef published The Great Transition, “the first comprehensive blueprint for building an economy based on stability, sustainability and equality”. Now as part of Imagine 2020, a European network of 11 arts organisations engaged in arts and climate change, we present a day of performance, film and discussion imagining and initiating how the Great Transition might look.

www.artsadmin.co.uk | www.liftfestival.com | www.imagine2020.eu

The journey includes performances by Harry Giles, The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home, Curious Directive, new shorts

by Inua Ellams, Gonรงalo Tocha, Mels van Zutphen, XTNT, a lecture by Andrew Simms (nef) followed by a roundtable discussion.

Imagine the Great Transition features a special presentation of The Roadless Trip by Sarah Woods and Richard Gott. An urgent and irresistible invitation to imagine and create a positive future, The Roadless Trip is a very human and often hilarious journey through time, mixing performance, film, audience interaction and the frenzy of the popular gameshow.

www.neweconomics.org | Photo by Ludovic Alussi (XTNT)

MANY THANKS TO OUR FUNDERS AND PARTNERS

MEDIA PARTNER:

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CALENDAR OIL CITY WORLDSTRIKE!

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FOLLOW US Get all the latest updates on Twitter. @two_degrees | #twodegs2013 Or vist our website. www.artsadmin.co.uk/twodegrees

BOOKING INFO Book by phone 020 7650 2350 Mon – Fri | 10am – 6pm and throughout the festival

Address Toynbee Studios 28 Commercial Street London E1 6AB

Book online www.artsadmin.co.uk

Nearest tube: Aldgate East

Two Degrees 2013 is supported by the European Commission Culture Programme.

Artsadmin is supported using public funding by Arts Council England. Registered company in the UK no. 2979487. Registered charity no. 1044645.

Design by Ultimate Holding Company.